Black and Blue Magic (6 page)

T
HAT NIGHT, HARRY LAY
awake for hours, wondering and worrying. He didn’t want to tell Mom and get her all worried, too, unless there really was a reason. And maybe there wasn’t any reason. Maybe there was a perfectly understandable explanation of why a strange-acting little man should be sneaky and suspicious about his suitcase and why it should contain, among other strange-looking objects, a long, sharp, gleaming sword. The trouble was, it was pretty hard for Harry to imagine what that explanation could be.

He might be a professional sword swallower, for instance, except that wouldn’t explain why he pretended to be a salesman, and why he was so secretive. There’s no reason to pretend you’re not a sword swallower if you are one.

Still, in spite of its weaknesses, that was just about the best possibility that Harry could come up with. Possibility! There was that word again! It was beginning to look as if the Swami were right and the air really was full of possibilities. Only right now, some of them were almost too awful to think about. Like, for instance, the fact that a boarding house might be a good place to hide in if you’d committed some terrible deed; the kind of deed you might do with a big—sword.

The worst of it was that if something terrible did happen, it would be Harry’s fault. After all, he was the one who had asked Mr. Mazzeeck to come to the boarding house.

After lying awake half the night, Harry finally decided the best thing to do would be to keep quiet, for the time being, and just try to keep an eye on Mr. Mazzeeck. It wouldn’t be for long. Mr. Mazzeeck had already been at Marco’s for three days and he’d said something about three or four days when he arrived. Besides, it was very unusual for a traveling salesman to stay more than a few days at a time. But, of course, that sort of depended on whether Mr. Mazzeeck really was a traveling salesman.

It wasn’t four days, or five, or even six. Mr. Mazzeeck was right there at Marco’s for a whole week after that night when Harry first saw the sword. And during that week all sorts of terrible things happened. Not that Mr. Mazzeeck murdered anyone in his sleep or did any of the other awful things Harry had imagined. What did happen, were things that had never even occurred to him.

In the first place, it was the very next day that Clarissa Clyde came to stay at Marco’s Boarding House. When Mom called Harry into the living room to carry Miss Clyde’s bright red imitation alligator luggage upstairs, he didn’t realize that more trouble had arrived. In fact, he was feeling pretty happy that they had a new boarder, who might be permanent. It was somebody to take Miss Thurgood’s place—and someone who might be a little more interesting, too.

For one thing, Miss Clyde was a night club singer. He’d overheard her telling Mom so. That was something new and different for Marco’s. As far as Harry could remember, they’d never had any kind of singer before. And even if Miss Clyde was strange looking, at least she was a change from Miss Thurgood.

Miss Clyde was a big woman, not fat exactly, but a good bit wider than Mom, at least in places. She was probably as old as Mom, but it was a little hard to tell because her real face was all cluttered over with make-up. Her hair was a stiff yellow color, like a doll in a store window, and her red and white dress looked as if it wasn’t quite big enough to fit her.

But the happiness about having a new boarder didn’t last very long; at least not for Harry. Right away, he found out one awful thing: she called people Sweetie. Everybody—even boys. When Harry got to the top of the stairs with her luggage, she gave him a dime and said, “There you go, Sweetie. Thanks a million.”

That was bad enough, but something worse started happening that night at dinner. It began almost the very moment Mom introduced Miss Clyde to the rest of the boarders. Right away Miss Clyde popped herself down next to Mr. Brighton, and even before the very first meal was over she was calling him “Sweetie” and “Hal” and flopping her long sticky-looking eyelashes up and down.

Harry was really disgusted. He saw what she was doing right away. It was just like when Miss Dutton started in on the beauty shop man, only about a million times worse. It was all so obvious you couldn’t help noticing, but Mom didn’t seem to. At least, she didn’t fight back at all, like flopping her eyelashes, too, and giggling, or any of the other things women do when they want somebody’s attention. Harry did the best he could by trying to start a conversation with Mr. Brighton about the Giants’ shut-out game against the Dodgers. But Mr. Brighton didn’t seem to be in the mood for baseball. It was a terrible meal.

By that evening Harry had decided that there wasn’t anything he could do about Clarissa Clyde, at least not right then; but it was that very night that he thought of something he could do about Mr. Mazzeeck. Or, at least, something that might help him find out what the guy was up to. The thing that occurred to him was that there was a way to look in the window of Mr. Mazzeeck’s room.

The old carriage house on the Furdell place was right next to the edge of Marco’s property. It was a huge old barn-like place with all sorts of curly wood-trimmings. It had a slanted roof and above that a little flat one, like a platform, with a railing around it. There were stairs that led up to the flat roof on the outside of the building. Mr. Furdell said that his grandfather used to be a ship’s captain, and he had had it built that way so he could watch the ships on the bay.

Anyway, there was a swell view from up there, and if you looked towards the west you could look right into the second-story windows of the two old houses.

Harry waited until it was good and dark before he slipped through the gate to the Furdell’s yard and up the stairs to the roof of the carriage house. Just as he had hoped, the blind was up in Mr. Mazzeeck’s room and the light was on. Harry could clearly see the picture of a vase of roses and an apple on the opposite side of the room, but for a long time he didn’t see anything of Mr. Mazzeeck. If he was in the room he certainly wasn’t moving around much.

It seemed like more than an hour that Harry knelt behind the railing and peered into Mr. Mazzeeck’s room. At least it was long enough for him to get awfully cold and damp and stiff. Then, just as he made up his mind to give up, he saw Mr. Mazzeeck walk across the room.

Harry sat back down with a thump. A few seconds later, Mr. Mazzeeck came back across the room looking at something in his hands. He crossed the room to the window and glanced out. Harry caught just a glimpse of the thing in his hands—something golden and shiny—before Mr. Mazzeeck pulled down the blind.

But at that point Mr. Mazzeeck made a mistake. He didn’t seem to realize that even though the shade was down, the window could still be dangerous. It didn’t seem to occur to him that if he really didn’t want to be seen, he shouldn’t stand so near a thin window-shade with a light on behind him.

Immediately there appeared on the window-shade a short, well-rounded silhouette, as clear and sharp as the figures in a magic lantern show. It was unmistakably Mr. Mazzeeck, and he appeared to be doing something with the object in his hands.

Harry felt a thrill of awful anticipation, like when the background music in a horror picture tells you that something terrible is about to leap out at you. It didn’t exactly look like a sword in Mr. Mazzeeck’s hands; but maybe that was only because of the angle the light was hitting it.

Then, as the imaginary horror music reached a brain-numbing climax, Harry realized that Mr. Mazzeeck was not alone in his room. Harry was sure he hadn’t so much as blinked, but somehow he had missed the arrival of the huge shadowy figure that now faced the shorter, rounder silhouette. The other man seemed to have a huge head and shoulders, and as he towered over Mr. Mazzeeck, he swayed backward and forward, as if he were unsteady on his feet.

For less than a minute, hardly long enough for Harry to convince himself that he was really seeing it, the second figure in Mr. Mazzeeck’s room cast its shadow against the shade. Then, while Harry still stared in unblinking fascination, it began to change. First, it became softer and less distinct; it wavered more than ever and became blurry around the edges. Then suddenly, it shrank away to nothing. The shorter shadow stayed for a moment; then it disappeared too. But it only seemed to walk away from the window.

It was some time before Harry began to realize that he was in a very uncomfortable position on the roof of the carriage house. He was cold and stiff, and he had been staring at the golden rectangle of window-shade for so long that he felt a little cross-eyed. He had to blink several times and rub his eyes before he could focus well enough to find his way down the stairs and across the yard to the back door.

On his way upstairs he stopped for a moment and listened outside Mr. Mazzeeck’s door, but everything was quiet. Up in his own room, he threw himself down on the bed and thought and thought and thought.

Who was the other man in Mr. Mazzeeck’s room? What had Mr. Mazzeeck been holding in his hands? If someone fell to the floor in front of a window, would his shadow on the shade appear to shrink away?

The longer Harry thought about it, the harder it was to remember just exactly what he had seen. By the time he gave up trying to figure it out, he wasn’t at all sure he hadn’t imagined the whole thing.

The next few days were terrible, at least in the mornings and evenings when all the borders were home. It turned out that Miss Clyde really lived on what she called her “private income” and only had “occasional engagements” at night clubs. Mom said she thought Miss Clyde got alimony from somebody she used to be married to, but Harry had seen her once in the hall without her make-up, and he figured that maybe the “private income” was an old age pension. Anyway she didn’t go to work much, so she was around the boarding house an awful lot.

Harry was just about going crazy, trying to keep his eye on Mr. Mazzeeck and Miss Clyde and Mr. Brighton all at the same time. And as if things weren’t bad enough, he started having to keep a watch on Mom and Mr. Konkel, too.

Harry had always known that Mr. Konkel was sort of gone on Mom, but he’d never worried about it, because it was pretty plain that Mom didn’t like him any more than Harry did. And that wasn’t much. In fact, Harry and Mom had had a joke about Mr. Konkel for a long time. When no one else was around, of course, Mom would say something like, “There goes Oscar Konkel, the man-like machine.”

“It walks, it talks, it breathes, it’s almost human,” Harry would say, “but it has a ticker tape for a heart.”

“And a slide rule for a brain,” Mom would add. Sometimes they got so funny on the subject, that for a day or two they couldn’t look at each other when Mr. Konkel was around without wanting to giggle.

But now, all of a sudden, Mom changed. She started to listen to Mr. Konkel’s long boring stories about how he solved the mystery of the missing decimal point, or how he caught a sneaky grocery clerk, red-handed, trying to rob him of two cents change. She let Mr. Konkel give her a box of candy, and one night she even went for a walk with him.

For once Lee wasn’t being much help, either. He hadn’t come up with any good ideas about Mom and Mr. Brighton, yet, and when Harry told him about Miss Clyde, all he said was that it might be a good thing if she would go some place else to board.

Harry already knew that, for Pete Squeaks! The problem was how to get her to go.

It seemed all in all as if things couldn’t get much worse.

M
R. MAZZEECK STAYED AND
stayed, and Harry got more and more nervous about him. On the evening of the eleventh day, Harry was feeling very tired and discouraged. Mr. Brighton had actually taken Miss Clyde out—that is, he was going somewhere and Miss Clyde had asked him for a lift downtown. So maybe they were together somewhere without Harry around to keep an eye on them.

All evening long Harry had been stuck in the living room with nothing at all to do. He hadn’t been able to leave because he’d had to watch Mom and Mr. Konkel. Mr. Konkel was teaching Mom to play chess. Chess was the only game that Mr. Konkel enjoyed playing, because, according to him, you had to play by a formula; and if you were a good enough player, the whole thing was predictable from the very beginning.

Harry climbed into bed that night wishing he were too worried to be tired, or too tired to be worried; instead of a whole lot of both. It was some time after he had finally worried himself to sleep that he woke up suddenly and completely. He had a very strong feeling that he’d heard something. Not traffic noise or a foghorn on the bay, but a small sound very close to his bed. He waited for a moment, holding his breath, and the noise came again. Someone was knocking on his door.

Harry fought down an urge to pull the covers up over his head and just lie there. Instead, he swallowed hard, slipped out of bed, and opened the door just a crack. He peeked out and found himself nose to nose with Mr. Mazzeeck.

“Ah,” Mr. Mazzeeck said. “There you are. I am so sorry to disturb your slumber, but I must see you tonight. It’s most urgent.”

Harry swallowed hard again and opened the door just a tiny bit wider. There was no sign of a sword. So after one or two more gulps he managed to say, “Sure, Mr. Mazzeeck. What can I do for you?”

“Come with me, please. We must go to my room.” He turned and started down the narrow third-floor stairs, and Harry grabbed his robe and followed. By the pale flickering light he could make out that Mr. Mazzeeck was not wearing the purple bathrobe that he’d had on the day Harry had brought him the cake. He was all dressed up in his funny-looking suit and overcoat. It was just about then that Harry noticed what was making the flickering light. The hall lights were out and Mr. Mazzeeck was lighting his way with—not a flashlight—not even a candle, which would have been strange enough—but with a lamp. The lamp seemed to be made of brass or bronze. It was oval-shaped and had a little pedestal, by which Mr. Mazzeeck was carrying it. A small flickering flame burned at one end of the oval.

Harry was so amazed and fascinated that he forgot to look where he was going, and just as they reached the bottom of the stairs he cracked his toe on a baluster. It was a bad bump—just about as painful as a stubbed toe can possibly be. But there was one good thing about it—it made Harry so darned mad that he forgot to be frightened. He just hobbled right into Mr. Mazzeeck’s room, sat down on the bed, and began rubbing his toe. Mr. Mazzeeck put the lamp on the bed table and sat down in a chair.